Current research at the national and regional levels has allowed new information to surface
on the role Kentuckians played in the fugitive slave movement. This research has partially
been spurred by an increased national and international effort to document the Underground
Railroad as a secret system of assistance- sometimes spontaneous, sometimes highly organized
- of efforts by blacks both free and enslaved, whites, and Native Americans led by the
National Park Service.

In learning a fuller history of Kentucky's role in slavery and in the fugitive slave
movement, there may be lessons for today's society. One of those lessons is that African
American history is a part of the fabric of the history of America and should not be
kept separate from the whole.